For reasons unknown, it seems that the tech media completely fails to give Jeff Bezos and Amazon the recognition that they deserve. I believe that this is due to a deliberate strategy executed by Amazon to quietly grab as much mind and market share as they can. If they continue on their trajectory, they may become unassailable, in fact, they may be already.

There are blogs and podcasts called things like Apple Insider, This Week In Google, Mac Break Weekly, etc… I have yet to hear about any blogs or podcasts about what Amazon is doing week-in and week-out, but in many ways it is much more interesting. Amazon now handles 1% of consumer internet traffic, pushing all of through its near ubiquitous compute cloud infrastructure. They are rapidly and efficiently dismantling existing retail. Amazon is probably on their way to completely owning web commerce. Amazon has mass amounts of data on what people have, want, and will want based on what they own and buy. Through their mobile applications they are gathering pricing signals from competitors so that they can use their own cluster computing prowess to spot change pricing.

What is shocking about this is, despite their proficiency, no one discusses how absurdly dominant Amazon has become. Everyone just treats Amazon running all internet commerce and large swaths of its infrastructure as “the way it is.” Amazon is more a force of nature at this point than a company.

It isn’t just the tech media that doesn’t give them the credit they deserve, major tech companies aren’t either. Google and Apple seem ready to laugh off the Kindle Fire while Amazon soaks up more signals. Microsoft doesn’t even try to match them. Google’s commerce efforts look half-baked compared to what Amazon does, and they show no signs of trying to do better.

It is absurd to think that with the bitter rivalries we constantly hear about between Apple and Google, Microsoft and Google, Microsoft and Apple, etc… that someone would start a podcast about Amazon. Fifty years from now technology changes will have toppled Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, but I’d bet that Amazon would still be around.

Jeff Bezos and his company wield algorithms and data more effectively than anyone else in the industry, despite all the credit we give Google for search. Their suggestion and comment filtering algorithms are bar none, the best around. Amazon is integrated into the fabric of our lives and that is something that no other tech company has done to that level.

Amazon will keep doing what Amazon does best, being ruthless, being efficient, executing better than anyone else, and staying ahead of the curve. As long as we keep ignoring them they are doing their job. The greatest trick Amazon ever pulled was convincing the world that they didn’t exist. They have convinced the world that they are just retail.